Linking Options For Action With Quick Wins
This report provides an overview of youth participation as it currently exists (Part I), outlines ways in which youth are directly involved and affected by each goal, demonstrates the ways in which young people are contributing to the MDGs, and provides ‘Options for Action’ that governments, the United Nations system, donors and other actors can harness, support and scale-up in order to enable young people to make a more significant contribution to meeting the MDGs (Part II). These Options for Action have been formulated as a result of research into current youth activities that are contributing to the achievement of the MDGs and the enabling environments necessary for youth to be active contributors to achieving the MDGs.
This section outlines both how young people can contribute to the Quick wins as developed by the Millennium Project, as well as outlining a number of youth-focused quick wins for the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals based on the Options for Action identified in this paper.
Youth Assisting In The MDG Quick Wins
The Millennium Project recommended developed and developing countries jointly launch a group of Quick Win actions in 2005 to save and improve millions of lives and to promote economic growth. They also recommend that a massive effort be launched to build expertise at the community level. Although being far from comprehensive, these Quick Win actions, if implemented, could bring vital gains to millions of people and start countries on the path to achieving the MDGs.
There are links and synergies between the Options for Action provided throughout Part II of this report and the Quick Win actions proposed by the Millennium Project. The Options for Action are complimentary and provide a process to implement the Quick Win actions, using young people as key implementing agents.
Mobilizing young people will contribute greatly to the effectiveness and sustainability of the Quick Win activities.
The following table outlines the synergies between some of the Options for Action and Quick Wins. These Options for Action could be implemented in the countries earmarked for Fast Tracking.
Quick Win Option for Action
Designing community nutrition programs for pregnant and lactating women and children under five that support breastfeeding, provide access to locally produced complementary foods and, where needed, provide micronutrient (especially zinc and vitamin A) supplementation.
4.2 Train unemployed youth in community-based health work, prenatal care, emergency obstetric care and family planning and expand these services in a strategic manner in developing countries.
Expanding access to sexual and reproductive health information and services, including family planning and contraceptive information and services, and closing existing funding gaps for supplies and logistics.
4.1 Establish teen clinics and promote peer-to-peer education on sexual and reproductive health, encouraging young people in the community to take a role in the design and needs assessment required for theses programs.
5.2 Encourage peer-to-peer education on sexual health and community-based condom distribution for youth by youth.
5.5 Fund and support youth-led media and awareness campaigns about scientific implications of some cultural practices.
6.1 Encourage youth-led sexual reproductive health education in secondary schools, and integrate HIV/AIDS education into curriculum as a sustainable way of sharing information about HIV/AIDS.
Quick Win Option for Action
Launching national campaigns to reduce violence against women.
3.1 Provide incentives and funding opportunities for NGOs and youth organizations to initiate non-formal education activities targeting girls and women. Where initiatives already exist develop replication strategies and scale up existing initiatives.
Providing community-level support to plant trees to provide soil nutrients, fuelwood, shade, fodder, watershed protection, windbreak, and timber.
7.9 Provide incentives such as grants or micro-finance for youth to work for safe water in their community, and for youth-led clean water projects.
7.11 Develop partnerships in areas without access to safe water to train youth to lead community-based water supply projects.
7.12 Governments support training in sustainable consumption towards sustainable lifestyle and follow up initiatives including networks and small grants.
Further to the direct synergies between Quick Wins and the Options for Action outlined above, youth can be effective service providers in many of the other Quick Win actions. Unemployed young people are an untapped resource and should to be viewed as partners in development. They have the potential to receive training, provide labor and be active partners in the rollout of the following Quick Win actions:
• Providing impoverished farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with affordable replenishments of soil nitrogen and other soil nutrients.
• Providing free school meals for all children using locally produced foods with take-home rations.
• Providing regular annual deworming to all schoolchildren in affected areas to improve health and educational outcomes.
• Training large numbers of village workers in health, farming, and infrastructure (in one-year programmes) to ensure basic expertise and services in rural communities.
• Distributing free, long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed-nets to all children in malaria-endemic zones to cut decisively the burden of malaria.
• Expanding the use of proven effective drug combinations for AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. For AIDS, this includes successfully completing the 3 by 5 initiative to bring anti-retrovirals to 3 million people by 2005.
• Setting up funding to finance community-based slum upgrading and earmark idle public land for low-cost housing.
• Providing access to electricity, water, sanitation, and the Internet for all hospitals, schools, and other social service institutions using off-grid diesel generators, solar panels, or other appropriate technologies.
Youth Focused Quick Wins
In addition to young people contributing in the implementation of the Millennium Project Quick Wins, there are a number of youth-specific quick wins that can make a significant and measurable difference to the state of young people in target countries.
The initiatives considered Quick Wins for youth are:
• Link local youth employment networks to clinics in disease-affected areas (Option for Action 6.4)
• Establish a fund to support youth led renewable energy enterprises (Option for Action 7.10)
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Develop partnerships in areas without access to safe water to train youth to lead community-based water supply projects (Option for Action 7.11).• Government must enact laws that foster the creation of community-driven projects with urban youth living in poverty, support current youth-led entrepreneurial initiatives in urban communities, as well as UN-HABITAT’s work in slum development.(Option for Action 1.7)